The National Center for Children in Poverty is developing a series of issue briefs on children and welfare reform to help policymakers, community leaders, and advocates use the opportunities afforded by welfare changes in ways that are most likely to benefit both children and adults. This second issue brief focuses on the impact of federal and…

Research on homeless children and families carried out by the Institute for Children and Poverty over the last 6 years is compiled in this document. The contents range from programmatic solutions and policy recommendations to simple "snapshots" of homeless families. Much of the research is based on the experiences of Homes for the…

The consequences and correlates of growing up poor as well as the mechanisms through which poverty influences children are explored. This book is organized with a primary focus on research findings and a secondary concern with policy implications. The chapters are: (1) "Poor Families, Poor Outcomes: The Well-Being of Children and Youth" (Jeanne…

A study was conducted to determine some of the problems and characteristics of low socioeconomic status (SES) parents who have children with low science achievement scores relative to parents of higher achievers. Sixteen low-achievement seventh graders in an urban school and 16 high-achievement students participated, along with their mothers.…

There is an alarming trend in homelessness: children aged 17 and younger are the most rapidly growing group of the homeless; families continue to be a growing group of the homeless; and many people who are homeless were raised or have lived in the suburbs. Homelessness is no longer an inner-city phenomenon. Three homeless youth were interviewed…

This study examined the relationships among parent psychological well-being, parents' perceptions of their children's social competence, and reported use of authoritative parenting strategies during the kindergarten year. Parents of 179 kindergarten children in a small Midwestern U.S. city who were also involved in a Head Start Transition Study…

This document is comprised of the eight consecutive issues of a newsletter of the Iowa Kids Count Project. The newsletter provides information about work undertaken by the Project, other important information on trends in child well-being, and updates on research and data development activities of interest on child and family issues. The Spring…

The status of American children is worse today than it has been at any time in the past 50 years. One in every five children in the United States lives in poverty. The incidence of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse has increased dramatically. Many children are physiologically and emotionally damaged or dying from the primary or secondary…

Testimony given at a congressional hearing on the unique problems of urban and rural schools, the federal role in addressing these problems, and the availability of resources at state and local levels is presented in this report. Representative William Jefferson described the disadvantages of urban schools, compared to suburban schools, with…

The Texas Advisory Committee to the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a public forum and gathered information on the extent to which early childhood education programs have affected equal educational opportunities for minority students in Texas. The hearings were held in response to the failure of public education systems to meet the…

The Action for Children Commission was created in 1991 to study the lives of young Minnesotans, develop a vision of what their lives should be like, and make recommendations concerning the state's role in realizing that vision. After examining the conditions experienced by Minnesota youth, the report recommends that the state help to: (1) mobilize…

Since the late 1970s, California's rural poor (frequently immigrants and refugees) have been engaged in grassroots efforts to change the cultural and political landscapes of their communities. Told in the words of rural people, this book presents six stories of struggle and empowerment. In Yuba City, Latino and East Indian farmworkers felt that…

The "rural school problem" continues to plague current researchers, as it did school reformers of the past. There are basically two academic literatures focusing upon rural communities and their schools where rurality rather than ethnicity is the focus. The historical literature typically features tales of rural economic decline,…

This report examines the progress in human capital development made by counties in the South during the 1980s. County-level data from 13 southern states were collected primarily from the 1980 and 1990 censuses. Thirteen maps depict, at the county level, completion of high school or more in 1980 and 1990, percent change in high school completion…

This evaluation report is the third in a series of reports that are part of a 4-year national effort designed to describe the types of Even Start projects that have been funded, the services provided, the collaboration efforts undertaken, and the obstacles to program implementation that have been encountered. The current report provides…